"Formed in late 2008 and based in Oakland, CA, Cloud Shepherd is a trio playing improvised music. Andrew Joron, is the Theremin and waterphone operator. Brian Lucas uses 6 string bass, tapes, percussion, voice and keyboards. He is also a visual artist. In a previous life he was a member of the free form psychedelic band,Mirza. Lucas has recently worked with Big City Orchestra and was a member of Caroliner in the mid-90s. On various flutes, bowls, and percussion is the poet Joseph Noble, blowing long meditative one notes and flurried runs that hearken back to a time when Space Was The Place."

Josef Kaplan is the author of Our Heavies and Peace, and co-author of Dunk Runts with Gordon Faylor. He co-edits Sustainable Aircraft, an online journal of mostly criticism on contemporary poetry, and Tea Party Republicans Press.

Michael Scharf's poetry "mimics a vernacular language so debased it does actual harm." He was poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly from 1997 until 2006. At Poets & Writers magazine, he founded and wrote the column Metromania. In 1999, he founded Harry Tankoos Books, which publishes books and chapbooks; in 2006, with the poet Joshua Clover, he co-founded the small press ingirumimusnocteetconsumimurigni, publisher of Kevin Killian's Action Kylie, among other books. He holds a B.A. in cognitive science from Vassar College, and an M.A. in linguistics from Brown University. His work has appeared in Chain, ubuweb, Jacket, the Germ, and the Poetry Daily Essentials anthology.